Insurance – Coming of Age in a Digital Future

Risk has been a part of the human experience from the beginning, and the urge to mitigate risk through insurance goes back thousands of years. But until quite recently, insurance has always been a business of people.A business relying on insurance agents with years of experience working with customers they really knew: not just policy holders, but people. People who lived in the same towns and shared the same experiences as the insurance agents themselves. Every interaction contributed to customer understanding and every discussion was personal and in the context of the moment. The experience was engaging and real-time. No one ever thought much about it in those terms of course. That’s the just the way it was.Technology changed everything. Using technology, insurers found they could gain competitive advantage by optimizing processes and creating efficiencies of scale. Through this strategy, insurers did indeed become more efficient, but they also became less personal. This new model, with efficiency at its core, shifted the balance of power towards the insurer and began a growing customer disconnect and an erosion in understanding and trust that had lasted 4,000 years.Now in the digital era and without the personal ties to their trusted insurers, customers seek their own economies. Armed with the internet, customers with just a few keystrokes can quickly compare competitor rates, ask their friends for recommendations, or read online comparisons and reviews. What’s more, they can do it through multiple devices at any time of day or night. The balance of power had shifted again but this time towards the customer, and the customer - not the insurer - now holds the power.This paper explores the challenges insurers now face and how innovative insurers are meeting these challenges through best practices and a reimagined business model.